Is the case for polygamy as strong as for same-sex marriage?

Opponents of same-sex marriage warned of dire consequences if they were legalized, that pressure would build to make polygamy also legal and people would demand the right to marry their children or siblings or their pets. Now that the Supreme Court has authorized such marriages in the Obergefell ruling, they may decide to show that their warnings were not mere hyperbole and test that proposition by making such marriage license requests.
[Read more…]

Two more (short-term) victories at the Supreme Court

The religious right has been successful at chipping away at the right of women to get abortions and contraceptives, putting in one restriction after another. The US Supreme Court has generally gone along with these moves but at the very end of the past term the court issued two rulings that, at least in the short term, seemed to go the other way.
[Read more…]

Why some Supreme Court decisions take so long

The last three days of the Supreme Court saw seven important opinions being released, including those on Obamacare, same-sex marriage, the death penalty, environmental regulation, and redistricting. In previous years too, major opinions were released at the very end and one issue that has come up for discussion is whether the justices deliberately keep the high-profile rulings until the end of the term.
[Read more…]

Is the Supreme Court liberal or conservative?

Despite the victories in the same-sex marriage and Obamacare cases, the general impression that people have is that the US Supreme Court is ideologically conservative. The meaning of labels like ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ and ‘right’ are notoriously hard to pin down and are operationally elusive and I would love to be able to avoid them but cannot because they do provide a rough but convenient shorthand description for a general attitude, and thus avoids having to provide detailed descriptions.
[Read more…]

The next stage of the war against same-sex marriage

The next stage in the war waged by same-sex marriage opponents is becoming clear. Forget the bluster about passing a constitutional amendment specifically banning it or impeaching the supreme court justices who voted in favor of it and replacing them with justices who will vote in the opposite way. Those things will never, ever happen and are just red meat thrown out to the rubes by politicians to get them all riled up.
[Read more…]

Using the Hobby Lobby precedent against same-sex marriage

Conservatives are losing their minds over last week’s double whammy they received from the US Supreme Court on Obamacare and same-sex marriage and are trying to find ways to defy the rulings. While there is little they can do about the Obamacare decision except vow to repeal it whenever they get the opportunity to do so after some future election success, they have more options with same-sex marriage.
[Read more…]

Two more important Supreme Court opinions to be issued today

Today is the last day for the current term of the US Supreme Court and three opinions are still to be issued. Although the extremely high profile ones of Obamacare and same-sex marriage are done, I am particularly interested in two of the remaining ones, dealing as they do with gerrymandering and the death penalty. (The third remaining opinion to be issued is Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency as to “Whether the Environmental Protection Agency unreasonably refused to consider costs in determining whether it is appropriate to regulate hazardous air pollutants emitted by electric utilities” and pits the power plant industry against the EPA.)
[Read more…]

Which justice switched on Obamacare?

One interesting point of the Obamacare verdict was its 6-3 nature. Recall that the opponents of Obamacare had lost their case in all the Appeals Courts where it had been heard. They won 2-1 only in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and then that court decided that the case would be heard en banc, i.e., reheard by the entire bench. It was predicted that the full court would reverse the decision by the three-judge panel, thus making the Appeals Courts results unanimous again.
[Read more…]